This snapshot is what happened when I couldn't keep up with Jorg and MPB as we wandered through the oldest part of Bremen. Berlin was way too much fun. More details later.
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Träumerei über Deutschland
This snapshot is what happened when I couldn't keep up with Jorg and MPB as we wandered through the oldest part of Bremen. Berlin was way too much fun. More details later.
Monday, October 26, 2015
Friday, February 13, 2015
Friday the 13th #1: Photoshoot!
Because Friday the 13th happens three times this year -- and won't happen again for another 11 years! -- I thought it would be fun to do something momentous for each one. I'm not superstitious but I know way too many specifics about my Southern rural traditions, and I have sense enough to respect them. Everybody's got their thing. Such is life.
It's interesting to mark the days this way, with art that I make or ideas that catch me off guard. This moment came together with photographer Steven Rosen so effortlessly, it felt like fate. Steven was the one who took this portrait of me at the Jazz Age Lawn Party last year. This photo captures the ethereal, timeless, elegant nature of the event -- and me! -- so completely, that asking him to shoot me for the April residency was a no-brainer.
I will be in residence at Minton's Harlem every Tuesday in April, with a program I've created that is dedicated to delving into unknown facets of Billie Holiday's body of work. Every week, I will present a different idea, with unexpected results. What's especially exciting is that 2015 is her centennial year and the first Tuesday of the residency -- April 7th -- is her birthday.
I have been thinking about the visuals for this project for a long time, mostly because I was in the process of shaping my own image and I knew that it would bend its way onto this idea whether I wanted it to or not. I wanted something simple and austere, yet elegant and beautiful -- mood-inducing stuff -- because ultimately, I should look the way the music sounds. But it's bigger than that. I can no longer have anyone look at me and think of anyone else except me. And that's WAY more difficult than it sounds.
Here's an out-take. And just in case you were wondering: I'm wearing a Byron Lars silver hobble dress, I did my own hair and make-up, and yes, I styled it myself.
For information about the April residency at Minton's Harlem and/or to make reservations, please call 212 243 2222.
I know there are a lot of people who will be looking for gardenias in my hair or an imitative send-up of her more popular material, because quite a few of those people have approached me whenever I sing any Holiday standard with a peony on my head. Sometimes they say the oddest things, like how my flower is on the wrong side of my head or how I don't sound like Billie Holiday at all or how I must listen to a lot of Carmen McRae or Nina Simone or whoever their favorite black female jazz singer is. I love peonies. I think they're a gigantic burst of color to my soul. I think they wake up something in me whenever I wear them. But I can't wear them anymore.
I have absolutely no intentions of turning myself into Lady Day for a month. Miss Holiday herself got tired of that flower and those songs long before she passed away, and made a point of moving past them with resolve when the rest of the world refused to do so. My question is, what about the rest of her work?
I hope that everyone is as interested in her rare sides as I am -- those songs that were hits back in the day but don't get a lot of attention, here and now.
See you in April.
It's interesting to mark the days this way, with art that I make or ideas that catch me off guard. This moment came together with photographer Steven Rosen so effortlessly, it felt like fate. Steven was the one who took this portrait of me at the Jazz Age Lawn Party last year. This photo captures the ethereal, timeless, elegant nature of the event -- and me! -- so completely, that asking him to shoot me for the April residency was a no-brainer.
I will be in residence at Minton's Harlem every Tuesday in April, with a program I've created that is dedicated to delving into unknown facets of Billie Holiday's body of work. Every week, I will present a different idea, with unexpected results. What's especially exciting is that 2015 is her centennial year and the first Tuesday of the residency -- April 7th -- is her birthday.
I have been thinking about the visuals for this project for a long time, mostly because I was in the process of shaping my own image and I knew that it would bend its way onto this idea whether I wanted it to or not. I wanted something simple and austere, yet elegant and beautiful -- mood-inducing stuff -- because ultimately, I should look the way the music sounds. But it's bigger than that. I can no longer have anyone look at me and think of anyone else except me. And that's WAY more difficult than it sounds.
Here's an out-take. And just in case you were wondering: I'm wearing a Byron Lars silver hobble dress, I did my own hair and make-up, and yes, I styled it myself.
For information about the April residency at Minton's Harlem and/or to make reservations, please call 212 243 2222.
I know there are a lot of people who will be looking for gardenias in my hair or an imitative send-up of her more popular material, because quite a few of those people have approached me whenever I sing any Holiday standard with a peony on my head. Sometimes they say the oddest things, like how my flower is on the wrong side of my head or how I don't sound like Billie Holiday at all or how I must listen to a lot of Carmen McRae or Nina Simone or whoever their favorite black female jazz singer is. I love peonies. I think they're a gigantic burst of color to my soul. I think they wake up something in me whenever I wear them. But I can't wear them anymore.
I have absolutely no intentions of turning myself into Lady Day for a month. Miss Holiday herself got tired of that flower and those songs long before she passed away, and made a point of moving past them with resolve when the rest of the world refused to do so. My question is, what about the rest of her work?
I hope that everyone is as interested in her rare sides as I am -- those songs that were hits back in the day but don't get a lot of attention, here and now.
See you in April.
Friday, June 07, 2013
30 Days of Birthday: Day 7 - The Civil War exhibits at The Met
An ambrotype image of the Pattillo Brothers of Henry County, each holding D-guard Bowie or side knives: (from l to r) Benjamin, George, James and John -- Company K, 22nd Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry. They enlisted together on the same day -- August 31, 1861 -- and served with the Army of Northern Virginia. If you'd like to know what happened to them in battle, click here.
When I spend the day at The Met in the Balcony Lounge -- listening to jazz, rewriting and rereading, and yes, thinking way too much -- sometimes I wander into an installation to distract myself and clear my head. There are several on hand that coincide with the anniversary of the Civil War and they are wondrous.
The exhibit Photography and the American Civil War is the one that has consistently pulled me in from the inside out, in part because I love to tromp through history books and sift through it all to find out What Actually Happened. This is the war that was photographed exhaustively, the first major conflict to come alive inside that lens. The hoi polloi was understandably transfixed.
What's especially alluring (and yes, disturbing) is that the people in the photos look real. Really, really real. There's just no other way to put it. Most of them look as though they are reaching through that expanse of space and time and whatever else stands between us, and really seeing me. The kicker is that a few of them look like people I actually know. The brothers in the photo above are no exception.
I can't see a piece of art once and get everything out of it and walk away. The more I look at it, the more I see, the more inspired I feel.
These photos are ethereal. I can't get them out of my head.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Envisioning Emancipation
Apparently, this somewhat celebratory moment that commemorates the Emancipation Proclamation isn't lost on Hollywood or the media. There are an avalanche of movies, documentaries, exhibits and the like that are to be released within the next two years. Here's a little something that caught my eye.
The book Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and The End of Slavery -- released on January 1st by Temple University Press -- has me spellbound. I get lost inside those faces, their collective stance, the feel of it all. They are somber, elegant and in most instances, they are painfully well dressed. What's especially disturbing is that they look too familiar. I remember thinking, I know that look on that little boy's face. The way that soldier's shoulder is thrown back, the way her arms are folded. If I look at those pictures for too long, I can almost sense their thoughts. It's all so dignified, so full of self-respect and hope.
Many of the photos have never been seen before. God only knows where they were hidden or how they were found.
Images in media are so much more important than we think they are. As we are shown someone else's perspective of us, we are taught so many things -- who we are, what we look like, where we stand, whether we truly matter. For God knows how long -- for too long, really -- we have seen ourselves through the bluest eye. And now this: thousands of photographs taken by us, for us -- black photographers capturing snapshots of black people as they stand on the brink of freedom and true self-determination. I have seen other pictures from this era and when I look at these, I can feel the difference.
The book Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and The End of Slavery -- released on January 1st by Temple University Press -- has me spellbound. I get lost inside those faces, their collective stance, the feel of it all. They are somber, elegant and in most instances, they are painfully well dressed. What's especially disturbing is that they look too familiar. I remember thinking, I know that look on that little boy's face. The way that soldier's shoulder is thrown back, the way her arms are folded. If I look at those pictures for too long, I can almost sense their thoughts. It's all so dignified, so full of self-respect and hope.
Many of the photos have never been seen before. God only knows where they were hidden or how they were found.
Images in media are so much more important than we think they are. As we are shown someone else's perspective of us, we are taught so many things -- who we are, what we look like, where we stand, whether we truly matter. For God knows how long -- for too long, really -- we have seen ourselves through the bluest eye. And now this: thousands of photographs taken by us, for us -- black photographers capturing snapshots of black people as they stand on the brink of freedom and true self-determination. I have seen other pictures from this era and when I look at these, I can feel the difference.
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